Subject: Fish Banks

Posted by Tim Joy on 10/5/2009

Message:

When is the Fish Banks app coming to the iPhone App Store?

Aside from Fish Banks, what other simulations have been effective teaching tools?

Anyone use the now-dated versions of the Sim-games (SimAnt, SimLife, SimCity, SimFarm) as teaching tools? I do recollect from my children’s versions that at least SimLife came with a teacher’s guide. It might be hard to convince people that gaming is a teachable moment, but certainly it is how most of us learn as children. And our culture does value, to some extent, athletic gaming as a learning environment.

Some years ago, I used AgLand, a farming game that was some help with crop rotations, short vs long term decisions, but it did not pack the punch that Fish Banks clearly does, primarily because the variability inherent in Fish Banks is not present in Ag Land.

What has been a successful debrief formula for Fish Banks? One class period? Two? Additional time with model-building? If you have used it as a lead to a social science class (i.e., government, economics, psychology) how did you set it up, and how went the debrief?

Just for the record . . . last year, very bad in the northwest for fishing. This year, records salmon runs in the Columbia and along the coast.

Tim

Follow Ups:

Fish Banks - Anne Lavigne 10/5/2009